From Zero To Hero: Cityman is the toughest idle game on the planet. Your goal in this game is to make more money than you spend, but you have to spend money on food, housing, girlfriend, clothing, and all kinds of other goodies to keep yourself happy and healthy. Your ultimate goal is to stay alive for as long as possible without going bankrupt and without having to spend your entire life (in the game) watching ads, instead working your way up to being the president. Read on for some tips and tricks for From Zero To Hero: Cityman!

First thing’s first, and that is knowing how to play the stock market. When you start the game, you’re only 17 and can play in the casino, but not the stock market (for some reason). Opposite of real life, essentially. Watch the movements of the stock, and watch them for patterns. Just like in real life, buy low and sell high. When you’re confident that you have the game down, play with the maximum bet.

The maximum bet will continue to increase as you get older and you get further into the game, but the volatility will often increase right along with it. Generally, the market has three modes: stagnant, skyrocketing, and plummeting. When it’s skyrocketing so much that it moves the entire graph up, buy towards the beginning of that. When it’s plummeting so hard as to move the graph, buy. When it’s stagnant and waving back and forth, buy right at the bottom of one of the spikes down or sell at the top of one of the spikes high.

Check your character’s profile for things that are making him actively unhappy. Address these things one by one because they will cause his happiness to fall quicker, and his health to fall quicker along with it, causing you to spend more money and/or time just keeping him happy and health than you otherwise would have spent on other things, or would have saved.

Each job that you hold will have all kinds of various requirements. Click the grayed-out accept button to see what the requirements are for the job, and start buying and/or saving for the ones that you can’t afford. And of course, hit the stock market to be able to afford them faster.

Don’t be afraid to stay in one job for a long time if it’s making you enough of a profit to live well. If the next job is going to put you into the negative zone, it’s probably a step up to am much better thing, but wait on it until you can afford to stick it out for a bit and move on. And don’t buy any expenditures until you absolutely need them, unless they are making you unhappy (for example, living in a dorm or being single).